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Arts & Crafts Showcase Review

For a while now, Toronto has been producing fantastic, innovative indie music and Arts & Crafts have always been at the forefront of that scene. The label are certainly no underground secret anymore thanks to Broken Social Scene's huge international success, however the night at The Lexington was a great opportunity to catch four of their more recently signed artists in an intimate venue.

Kicking off proceedings was Gold & Youth who play electro-indie laden with hooks. Check out Time To Kill which is also available as a free download from the Gold & Youth website.

The stand-out act of the night was Eight And A Half. Hype has been building around the three-piece who are one-part ex-member of Broken Social Scene and two-part ex-members of The Stills. It is naturally tempting to draw comparisons to their previous bands, but they fully deserve to be viewed as an entirely separate entity rather than draw lazy comparisons. Their recently released self-titled album is highly recommended listening, but in the meantime take a listen to Go Ego and the haunting Scissors.

The Darcys followed and played a passionate, harder-hitting set than the previous two acts. On record their music comes across much more restrained with a feel not too dissimilar to Amnesiac-era Radiohead. There is a raw side to the live set that gives a new angle to their music. Recently The Darcys also took the interesting step of releasing an interpretation of the 1977 Steely Dan albumAJA. We can't confirm it, but rumour has it that they were inspired to do this after seeing our sync for Steely Dan's Reelin' In The Years.

Headlining the night was Trust. The duo (of which one-half, Maya Postepski, also plays drums in Austra) are heavily influenced by 80s synth-pop. There's a sense of frostiness about Trust and their image is finely tuned to match that. However, I'm sure that the chilly breeze emanating from the speakers was combated by the notoriously un-breathable black leather they wore. Having said that, although heavily dressed up with 80s gothic styling, it is catchy stuff.

There were some great acts on show throughout the evening which just went to cement the fact that Arts & Crafts are always worth keeping an eye on.